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Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report
By David Johnston, Richard W. Stevenson and Douglas Jehl.
10/25/05 "New
York Times " --WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - I. Lewis Libby
Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned
about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a
conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public
in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.
Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby
and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's
testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about
the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers
said.
The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first
time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House
to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was
questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about
Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war.
Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New
York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson
worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made
public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated
column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.
Mr. Libby's notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his
information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of
central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice
president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that
either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's
undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a
covert agent's identity can be a crime, but only if the person who
discloses it knows the agent's undercover status.
It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of
whom are presumably cleared to know the government's deepest
secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the
administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators
away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by
Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an
illegal effort to impede the inquiry.
White House officials did not respond to requests for comment, and
Mr. Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, would not comment on Mr. Libby's
legal status.
Mr. Fitzgerald is expected to decide whether to bring charges in the
case by Friday, when the term of the grand jury expires. Mr. Libby
and Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, both face the
possibility of indictment, lawyers involved in the case have said.
It is not publicly known whether other officials also face
indictment.
The notes help explain the legal difficulties facing Mr. Libby.
Lawyers in the case said Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that
he had first heard from journalists that Ms. Wilson may have had a
role in dispatching her husband on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission to
Africa in 2002 in search of evidence that Iraq had acquired nuclear
material there for its weapons program.
But the notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald's possession, also indicate
that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson - who is also known by
her maiden name, Valerie Plame - from Mr. Cheney. That apparent
discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing
false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an
effort by Mr. Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers
said.
It is not clear why Mr. Libby would have suggested to the grand jury
that he might have learned about Ms. Wilson from journalists if he
was aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had obtained the notes of the
conversation with Mr. Cheney or might do so. At the beginning of the
investigation, Mr. Bush pledged the White House's full cooperation
and instructed aides to provide Mr. Fitzgerald with any information
he sought.
The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney knew the name of Mr. Wilson's
wife. But they do show that Mr. Cheney did know and told Mr. Libby
that Ms. Wilson was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and
that she may have helped arrange her husband's trip.
Some lawyers in the case have said Mr. Fitzgerald may face obstacles
in bringing a false-statement charge against Mr. Libby. They said it
could be difficult to prove that he intentionally sought to mislead
the grand jury.
Lawyers involved in the case said they had no indication that Mr.
Fitzgerald was considering charging Mr. Cheney with wrongdoing. Mr.
Cheney was interviewed under oath by Mr. Fitzgerald last year. It is
not known what the vice president told Mr. Fitzgerald about the
conversation with Mr. Libby or when Mr. Fitzgerald first learned of
it.
But the evidence of Mr. Cheney's direct involvement in the effort to
learn more about Mr. Wilson is sure to intensify the political
pressure on the White House in a week of high anxiety among
Republicans about the potential for the case to deal a sharp blow to
Mr. Bush's presidency.
Mr. Tenet was not available for comment Monday night. But another
former senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet had been
interviewed by the special prosecutor and his staff in early 2004,
and never appeared before the grand jury. Mr. Tenet has not talked
since then to the prosecutors, the former official said.
The former official said he strongly doubted that the White House
learned about Ms. Wilson from Mr. Tenet.
On Monday, Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby both attended a cabinet meeting
with Mr. Bush as the White House continued trying to portray
business as usual. But the assumption among White House officials is
that anyone who is indicted will step aside.
On June 12, 2003, the day of the conversation between Mr. Cheney and
Mr. Libby, The Washington Post published a front-page article
reporting that the C.I.A. had sent a retired American diplomat to
Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had been
seeking to buy uranium there. The article did not name the diplomat,
who turned out to be Mr. Wilson, but it reported that his mission
had not corroborated a claim about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear
material that the White House had subsequently used in Mr. Bush's
2003 State of the Union address.
An earlier anonymous reference to Mr. Wilson and his mission to
Africa had appeared in a column by Nicholas D. Kristof in The New
York Times on May 6, 2003. Mr. Wilson went public with his
conclusion that the White House had "twisted" the intelligence about
Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material on July 6, 2003, in an Op-Ed
article in The New York Times.
The note written by Mr. Libby will be a crucial piece of evidence in
a false-statement case against him if Mr. Fitzgerald decides to
pursue it, lawyers in the case said. It also explains why Mr.
Fitzgerald waged a long legal battle to obtain the testimony of
reporters who were known to have talked to Mr. Libby.
The reporters involved have said that they did not supply Mr. Libby
with details about Mr. Wilson and his wife. Matthew Cooper of Time
magazine, in his account of a deposition on the subject, wrote that
he asked Mr. Libby whether he had even heard that Ms. Wilson had a
role in sending her husband to Africa. Mr. Cooper said that Mr.
Libby did not use Ms. Wilson's name but replied, "Yeah, I've heard
that too."
In her testimony to the grand jury, Judith Miller, a reporter for
The New York Times, said Mr. Libby sought from the start of her
three conversations with him to "insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson's
charges."
Mr. Fitzgerald asked questions about Mr. Cheney, Ms. Miller said.
"He asked, for example, if Mr. Libby ever indicated whether Mr.
Cheney had approved of his interview with me or was aware of them,"
Ms. Miller said. "The answer was no."
In addition to Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller, Mr. Fitzgerald is known to
have interviewed three other journalists who spoke to Mr. Libby
during June and July 2003. They were Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler
of The Washington Post and Tim Russert of NBC News.
Mr. Pincus and Mr. Kessler have said that Mr. Libby did not discuss
Mr. Wilson's wife with them in their conversations during the
period. Mr. Russert, in a statement, declined to say exactly what he
discussed with Mr. Libby, but said he first learned the identity of
Mr. Wilson's wife in the column by Mr. Novak.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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